I have noticed in a particular genome sequence of a prokaryote that various regions in a sequence share similarity which is high(>80%) with known proteins. However, the start is not a methionine. Is ...

My bloodgroup for example is A+. How much information is knowing my bloodgroup? How much information can be known from a blood sample? I expect you to be able to clone if known a complete DNA sequence ...

If instincts are passed on through genetics, how is that information encoded in DNA?
For example, spiders instinctively know how to spin webs. Does that imply that the algorithm for web spinning is ...

I have a problem with a molecular biology question; I don’t understand how DNA 3’ labelling works.
I took a diagram from my lesson and tried to understand with it; this is what I understood.
If I’m ...

I've heard about services like 23andme, which offer genetic testing to the general public. As a person who knows very little about genetics, I'm interested in the subject and would like to know what ...

How does formaldehyde cause protein-DNA crosslinking? I would guess it's because the strongly polar water molecule interacts strongly with polar residues on a protein-DNA complex, and adding a less ...

I'm having trouble finding a method to find exons in the original DNA sequence used to create the mRNA, even given the sequence of the mRNA, as I cannot find a way to reliably identify the beginning ...

I'm a computer programmer deeply interested in Biology.
I wish to write a computer simulation for cell differentiation. I understand there will be seemingly impossible challenges in doing this. But ...

What is the actual biological difference between mice and rats? Are they actually the same thing with two different names depending on appearance (are they all mice for instance and we call the larger ...

I am interested in a gene which is null lethal but I need to temporary induce diminished capacity. If a cell is homozygous is it possible to induce heterozygous phenotypes or a partial knockout from ...

As I understand it from my basic chemistry, there are some fundamental reactions that exist between any acid and other substances for example acid-base reactions that form a salt, and the existence of ...

I get conflicting answers. One would think if it was true, it would be rather seminal and widely known.
There are papers from Khorana[1], Holland[2], and Bretscher[3] (late 60s) that suggest that it ...

It is well known that the first DNA polymerase, Taq, is quite error prone. Newer generation commercial enzymes that have either been isolated from different thermophile species or have been improved ...

I've been reading a bit about "junk DNA" and how much of our genome consists of this "non coding DNA" in comparison to "coding DNA".
I'm just an interested layperson but I thought all combinations of ...

The DNA copying enzymes have a hard time working to the end of a chromosome. For circular chromosomes this is not a problem, since there is not a sharp 'end'. However, for a linear chromosome, without ...

In humans, each cell normally contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46. Monkeys, chimpanzees, and Apes have 24 pairs (twenty-four pairs), for a total of 48.
What caused humans to have 46?
...

Curiosity is on the Martian surface and is equipped with a slew of laboratory equipment. What would Curiosity need to discover to prove there is or has been life on Mars? Would it have to find DNA (or ...

I know that there are two most important directions of genetic information transfer in living organisms: DNA->DNA and DNA->RNA. The first is replication, and the second is transcription. I wonder if ...

This is mainly a followup question to the recent paper Next-Generation Digital Information Storage in DNA.
Personally, while I agree about the data density of the format, I can't help point out the ...

That is, they don't differ throughout the entire population. I understand of course that we can't DNA sequence every human, so by "fully" I mean there's an incredibly small probability of there being ...

The main paper for the Plasmodium palciparum genome project (Gardner et al., 2002) repeatedly mentioned that the unusually high A+T content (~80%) of the genome caused problems. For example they imply ...